Knowing that they are losing America’s support in the policy marketplace of ideas, Republicans are working feverishly post-election to attack the right to vote. We begin today’s roundup on this issue with analysis from Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post:
The Republican Party’s biggest problem is that too many people of color are exercising their right to vote. The party’s solution is a massive push for voter suppression that would make old-time Jim Crow segregationists proud.
The Conservative Political Action Conference circus last week in Orlando showed how bankrupt the GOP is — at least when it comes to ideas, principles and integrity. Some might argue that the party, in buying into the lie that last year’s election was somehow stolen, is simply delusional. I disagree. I think Republican leaders know exactly what they’re doing.
The GOP may have lost the White House and the Senate, but it remains strong in most state capitols. So far this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans in 33 states “have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access.” The thrust of virtually all these measures is to make it more difficult for African Americans and other minorities to vote.
At ABC News, Devin Dwyer analyzes Republican attacks on the right to vote and a major pending SCOTUS case:
As Republicans in nearly every state push new voting restrictions in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear a major case to decide how those new rules should be judged under federal civil rights law. [...]
At the heart of the case is the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting and lays out the standard for determining when it exists. Section 2 of the law says any measure which "results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the U.S. to vote an account of race or color" is illegal.
Ari Berman at Mother Jones has more:
The cases, which the Democratic Party brought against the state of Arizona and the Arizona Republican Party, concern two voting restrictions passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature—a ban on collecting mail-in ballots and a law throwing out votes cast in the wrong precincts—that were struck down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in January 2020 for discriminating against Native American, Latino, and Black voters.
From 2008 to 2016, Arizona threw out more than 38,000 ballots because voters showed up to the wrong voting precinct, even though their votes for statewide offices should still have been valid. Arizona rejected more out-of-precinct ballots than any other state—a rate 11 times higher than the state with the second-most rejections, Washington. In 2016, American Indians, Latinos, and Black voters were twice as likely as whites to have their ballots thrown out for this reason.
On a final note, don’t miss this piece by Ryan Cooper on the need to end the filibuster:
A great nation should pass laws based on who wins elections, not who can come up with most tendentiously expansive readings of some obscure procedural rule.